Developing countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change are angry about a new text released at COP29 on Friday, which says developed countries must pay $250 billion a year until 2035 for climate action
Global temperatures are likely to soar to record levels in the next five years as greenhouse gases and an El Niño climate pattern combine, pushing temperatures into “unchartered territory”, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said this week.
There is a 66% chance that the global average temperature milestone of 1.5°C will be breached between now and 2027 for at least one year, said the United Nations agency in an update.
There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record. It is also likely that that one year will beat the temperature record set in 2016, when there was an exceptionally strong El Niño.
The Paris Agreement sets out a global framework to stave off the worst effects of climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement, which refers to long-term warming over many years,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the WMO, said. “However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency.”
A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to “push global temperatures into uncharted territory”, he said, warning that this will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. “We need to be prepared.”
Moving further from climates we’re used to
The WMO said the chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C has steadily climbed since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10% chance of this threshold being exceeded.
Last year, the average global temperature was about 1.15°C above the 1850 to 1900 average. The annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2023 and 2027 is predicted to be between 1.1°C and 1.8°C higher than the 1850 to 1900 average.
The cooling influence of La Niña conditions over much of the past three years temporarily reined in the longer-term warming trend, said the WMO. “But La Niña ended in March and an El Niño is forecast to develop in the months to come. Typically, El Niño increases global temperatures in the year after it develops – in this case this would be 2024.”
The WMO said that along with increasing global temperatures, human-produced greenhouse gases are leading to more ocean heating and acidification, sea ice and glacier melt, sea-level rise and more extreme weather.
Southern Africa tracking towards climate disaster
Global change expert Nick King said the WMO’s findings are “very concerning, but not unexpected” as per the science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), among others.
In its Synthesis Report in March, the IPCC said that the planet is at 1.1°C of warming, with current climate policies projected to increase global warming by 3.2°C by 2100.
“This 1.5°C breach is, of course, a global average — and we know that Southern Africa, and indeed Africa, is warming faster than the average, so we can expect that Southern Africa will certainly go above this threshold,” said King.
“It cannot be overstressed how we are rapidly tracking towards climate disaster in Southern Africa beyond the next year or two, from anthropogenic [human-caused] global heating combined with this natural variation of an El Niño event and then, of course, anthropogenic climate change on its own, as politicians fail to make any significant inroads on mitigation.”
The impacts “won’t be a single ‘local extreme weather event’ like say the KZN floods last year” but rather a wide-ranging set of impacts lasting for as long as the El Niño impact is compounding it, he said. These include less rain, drying soils, loss of agricultural crops, enforced migrations from subsistence farming areas, national economic losses and the need for disaster relief.
“We may also, of course, get local extreme weather events over and above this longer-term effect.”
It’s not just the heat and temperature impacts locally, he said, “but also the potential wider concern that global higher temperatures may catalyse one or more global tipping points — Amazon forest collapse, Greenland and/or Antarctic ice-sheet collapse, etc, but we really shouldn’t be surprised by any of this.”
King pointed to how a devastating multi-year effect is being seen in East Africa, with recent analysis by World Weather Attribution — an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events — finding that human-induced climate change has increased the severity of drought in the region.
Outlook for South Africa
In its recent seasonal climate watch for April to August 2023, the SA Weather Service said that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso) was in a La Niña state, with forecasts indicating that it would return to a neutral state by autumn — March, April, May.
“However, Enso’s impact is limited for the coming seasons until the next summer season, which may be impacted by an El Niño state, if early predictions are correct,” it said. “The multi-model rainfall forecast indicates above-normal rainfall for the north-east of the country and below-normal rainfall for the south-west during all predicted seasons.”
As most of the rainfall during winter is expected in the far south-west, below-normal rainfall in those areas is expected to have a “significant impact”. Minimum and maximum temperatures are expected to be mostly above normal countrywide for the forecast period, it said. Above-normal rainfall is expected for the north-eastern parts of the country during late autumn and in early winter.
“However, the south-western part, which normally receives significant rainfall during the early winter season, is expected to receive mostly below-normal rainfall during this period. Therefore, the relevant decision-makers are encouraged to advise farmers in these regions to practise soil and water conservation, proper water harvesting and storage, and other appropriate farming practices.”
Resilient agricultural sector
Farmers already face a tough environment, said Janse Rabie, the head of AgriSA’s Centre of Excellence on Natural Resources and its legal and policy executive.
“Farmers in South Africa are extremely resilient and they need to adapt to what is before them and what they experience on a daily basis … They need to adapt continuously — obviously, being aware of the risks out there is vitally important,” he said.
There is a context in South Africa that mustn’t be neglected, “especially with rising temperatures, which necessarily leads to a high demand for water, coupled with the challenges with energy security and Eskom load-shedding and all of that that is going on”.
This last season, the agricultural sector had already experienced the effects of warmer climates, together with challenges domestically, “which are not necessarily climate-related but as far as supply of electricity is concerned, the ability to irrigate”.
“Taken together, that’s certainly a cause for concern and given the context of what global predictions are telling us, we’re going to have to be very careful and very geared for what we anticipate to come.”
Most expensive agricultural year
It’s very difficult to farm commercially as it is, Rabie said, with few governmental resources being allocated to the commercial agriculture sector because it is anticipated that they can withstand some environmental and external knocks.
“But we can’t forget that about 93% of the agricultural sector is small-scale and subsistence, they’re very important, but they simply don’t have that resilience to these externalities that others have.”
The year was the most expensive for agriculture because of high input costs, driven by, among other factors, the Russia-Ukraine war, global oil prices and fertiliser being three times more expensive than it was 24 months ago.
“It’s been an extremely challenging and expensive year … for agriculture. So, in that context, if we go into a season where there are further environmental challenges, increased temperatures and more weather unpredictability …
“We’ve gone through severe droughts before and it is a testing time for everybody … It’s also a testing time, not only from the production point of view, but also for consumers because obviously the cost burden of these things gets passed through to the consumer.
“From a food security point of view, we can’t just keep on importing, especially with dollar parity and the rand exchange rate, which has taken a knock due to a number of factors that nobody has any control of — in the farming context, at least. Together with that, we’re in for a rough time.”
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